Proxy

After a failed attempt last month at rolling out BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) for iOS and Android, BlackBerry is giving the rollout another try. However, anybody who did not sign up previously is stuck waiting for their turn as BlackBerry slowly rolls out BBM to new users... unless you know how to skip the line.

What could be more exciting than controlling your in-home lighting from your iPad? Yep, you guessed it, controlling you in-home lighting with your voice through the use of Siri. That is now a possibility thanks to developer Brandon Evans who has worked out a way to control the recently launched smart lighting system from Philips.

There's a story going around today about a new hack that appears to allow users to bypass iTunes and steal in-app purchases "for free". I put "for free" in quotation marks because, as Ally pointed out in her editorial on app theft, there's no such thing as free. This time, however, the cost could be something more than money. The way I understand it, the hack in question uses a proxy, requires you to install a bogus certificate, and change DNS settings. That allows the transaction to be intercepted before it reaches iTunes, and that's what lets it cheat developers out of payment. It's also what could let the hacker collect all your information instead.

A developer has managed to get Siri to control his home thermostat. The hack does not involve any jailbreaking but does involve setting up a proxy server which intercepts the Siri commands. This proxy server can then be used to add additional command functionality to Siri.

Curious how to configure access to a VPN client on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad? L2TP, PPTP, and IPSec VPN support are all built right into iOS and we'll show you how to set them up after the break!